The boundaries between the various branches of Volta-Niger are rather vague, suggesting diversification of a dialect continuum rather than a clear split of families. (wikipedia.org)

The constituent groups of the Volta-Niger family, along with the most important languages in terms of number of speakers, are as follows (with number of languages for each branch in parentheses): The Yoruboid languages and Akoko were once linked as the Defoid branch, but more recently they, Edoid, and Igboid have been suggested to be primary branches of an as-yet unnamed group, often abbreviated yeai. (wikipedia.org)

Many classifications continue to place Kordofanian as the most distant branch, but mainly due to negative evidence (fewer lexical correspondences), rather than positive evidence that the other languages form a valid genealogical group. (wikipedia.org)

The Igala is related to Yoruba with which it shares a previous common ancestor, it remains unclear when both language split, mutual intelligibility in modern times is only marginal, although the sound/tonal systems remain the same, akin to the relationship between the various daughter languages of the Romance or Slavic language families. (wikipedia.org)

Likewise, the Africanist Karl Richard Lepsius considered Bantu to be of African origin, and many 'Mixed Negro languages' as products of an encounter between Bantu and intruding Asiatic languages. (wikipedia.org)

Some authors saw the latter as languages which had not yet completely evolved to full Bantu status, whereas others regarded them as languages which had partly lost original features still found in Bantu. (wikipedia.org)

However, in some Edoid languages nasal vowels have been reanalyzed as allophones of oral vowels after nasal consonants, and in others nasal consonants have been reanalyzed as allophones of oral consonants before nasal vowels, reducing the number of phonemically nasal consonants. (wikipedia.org)

According to oral tradition, the Ogoni people migrated from ancient Ghana down to the Atlantic coast eventually making their way over to the eastern Niger Delta. (wikipedia.org)

In 1956, four years before Nigerian Independence, Royal Dutch/Shell, in collaboration with the British government, found a commercially viable oil field on the Niger Delta and began oil production in 1958. (wikipedia.org)

Because of oil spills, oil flaring, and waste discharge, the alluvial soil of the Niger Delta is no longer viable for agriculture. (wikipedia.org)

Kordofanian was presented as one of several primary branches rather than being coordinate to the family as a whole, prompting re-introduction of the term Niger-Congo, which is in current use among linguists. (wikipedia.org)

The bulk of genetic diversity appears to be a consequence of recent migrations and demographic events mainly from Asia and Europe, evident in a higher migration rate for speakers of Afro-Asiatic as compared with the Nilo-Saharan family of languages, and a generally higher effective population size for the former. (blogspot.com)

Hassaniya Arabic (a variety of Maghrebi Arabic) is spoken by a minority in Mali especially by the Azawagh Arabs (also known as nomadic Moors) nomadic ethnic Arab-ancestry tribes who are settling mainly in the area of Azawagh which is a dry basin covering what is today northwestern Niger, as well as parts of northeastern Mali and southern Algeria. (wikipedia.org)

The proposed western division contains Djenné Chiini and-most prominently-Koyra Chiini (KCh) (meaning "town language"), which is the local language of the historically eminent university town of Timbuktu in Mali ('Tombouctou' in French). (wikipedia.org)

In Mali, Koyraboro Senni or Koroboro Senni (KS) (meaning "town dweller language"), with 400,000 speakers, is the language of the town of Gao, the seat of the old Songhay Empire. (wikipedia.org)

In early classifications of the languages of Africa, one of the principal criteria used to distinguish different groupings was the languages' use of prefixes to classify nouns, or the lack thereof. (wikipedia.org)

In addition, the constitution recognizes the Arabic language as the language of Islam, giving it a formal status as the language of religion, and regulates its spreading within the Iranian national curriculum. (wikipedia.org)

The name of the group derives from the fact that nearly all of the ethnic groups who speak member languages refer to the city of Ilé Ifè as their place of origin - Defoid = èdè ('language') + ifè (Ife) + oid. (wikipedia.org)

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Arabic (as the language of Quran) became mandatory for pupils in Iran. (wikipedia.org)

In 2008, the public university Payame Noor University declared that Arabic will be the "second language" of the university, and that all its services will be offered in Arabic, concurrent with Persian. (wikipedia.org)

There are also several TV channels in Arabic language broadcasting from Iran, namely, Al-Alam, Al-Kawthar TV as well as IFilm. (wikipedia.org)

Arabic is spoken by a minority in Niger especially by the Diffa Arabs (also known as Mahamid Arabs) an Arab nomadic tribespeople who is living in eastern Niger, mostly in the Diffa Region. (wikipedia.org)

In 2015, the Turkey's Ministry of Education announced that as of the 2016-17 academic year, Arabic language courses (as a second language) will be offered to students in elementary school starting in second grade. (wikipedia.org)

The Arabic courses will be offered as an elective language course like German, French and English which are already being offered to elementary school students for a long time. (wikipedia.org)

According to a prepared curriculum, second and third graders will start learning the Arabic language by listening-comprehension and speaking, while introduction to writing will join these skills in fourth grade and after fifth grade students will start learning the language in all its four basic skills. (wikipedia.org)

The national public broadcaster of Turkey the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (also known as TRT) broadcasts TRT Al Arabiya a 24 hours a day TV channel in Arabic language (launched in April 2010). (wikipedia.org)

There is an insight into a historical stage of the language in the papers of Rudolf Fisch reflecting data collected during his missionary work in the German Togoland colony in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, especially the lexical list, though there is also some grammatical information and sample texts. (wikipedia.org)